Andrew Timlin sits quietly, only speaking when questioned directly, letting his father and brother do the majority of the talking.
“We are the Somerset Mall of the social media world,” Bryan Timlin, Andrew’s father said, leaning into the tape recorder to make sure he was being heard.“Everybody that we talk to loves it,” Andrew’s brother Alex Timlin, a finance major and graduate from University of Miami, said.
Every now and then Andrew would chime in, or even just nod in approval of what his family and co-founders were saying.
But when Andrew’s family decides to step out of the room for the rest of the interview, the new social networking site, and its president, are seen in a new light.
“You know Sean Parker? The guy that created Napster and Spotify?” Timlin said. “He has one of my favorite quotes in The Social Network.”
The quote Timlin shared reads “A million dollars isn’t cool, you know what’s cool? A billion dollars.”
He utters this line without the slightest hesitation, with every ounce of confidence that Sean Parker must’ve said it with. Timlin genuinely believes that he could be the next Sean Parker.
And OptHub could be his billion.
OptHub is a social networking site where users go to receive information that is sent from different groups or establishments that you, as an Opthub user, can ‘Opt-In’ to.
‘Opting-In’ is the primary function of the site. After you sign-in using your phone number and password, you are directed to the homepage which has a list of establishments and groups that you can ‘Opt-In’ to.
Once you ‘Opt-In’ to these groups you then receive information from those groups, offering things like discounts for OptHub users.
However, this site offers a service that many do not -- privacy.
“We are, unlike many social media platforms, a truly one-way communication platform.” Bryan Timlin said. “That does two things for our users: it keeps phone numbers, emails and names secure, and it also makes ‘Opting- Out’ certain.”
This means that if you want to leave the site, you can do it with complete assurance that you are out.
“When you’re out, you’re out,” Bryan Timlin said. “There is a definite certainty feature. It makes you feel good.”
The largest benefit of OptHub, according to Alex Timlin, is the “immediate notification.”
“You’re going to get all these offers right away,” Alex Timlin said. “Usually it is time sensitive information, like offers that take place in the next two hours.”
With all the many benefits of OptHub, the Timlins share a clear sense of what their users want from the site.
“There are tons of options,” Bryan Timlin said. “But the thing is, there aren’t boring things on the site, like CPA, or funeral homes or mechanics. We are trying to keep it young. Cool places to go, cool things to do.”
Bryan Timlin used an analogy about how Opthub is like a mall.
“First you might just be there to get some True Religion jeans,” he said. “But before you know it you are shopping around the whole mall. With OptHub you might just be there to ‘Opt-In’ to your first hour teacher’s page but when you get there you find ‘oh my God, there’s Chipotle’. The world opens up right in front of you.”
Andrew first brought the idea of OptHub up to his Dad in Andrew’s freshman year at Seaholm in 2009.
The main point of the website would be to give kids the same type of deals that adults get all the time.
“Andrew came to me and said ‘Dad, wouldn’t it be great for merchants to reach out to students and be able to give them specials?’” Bryan Timlin said.
The site he had in mind was a site that would give students the opportunity to get information about their favorite places to eat or shop, when they are out and about.
“So if some seniors or juniors are leaving for lunch,” Bryan Timlin asked. “Wouldn’t it be cool if you were sitting in your first hour and you get a text and go ‘oh my god, Primo’s is having a deal, we’ll go there.’?”
Although Opthub may be the biggest, this is in no way the Timlins’ first step in business or entrepreneurship.
“My dad has always been an entrepreneur,” Andrew Timlin said. “He started his own company as a developer.”
On top of this, Andrew’s brother Alex graduated with a finance degree from University of Miami.
“He is very involved in business,” Andrew Timlin said. “He has always read business books and magazines and recommended them to me.”
Growing up in this environment, Andrew has picked up on a definite sense of business. “I have always been very interested in stocks,” he said.
But saying that Timlin has “an interest in stocks” is an understatement. According to Timlin, his savvy in the market is exactly what he used to fund Opthub.
After having the appropriate amount of funding for the site, the next step was to find someone to do the logistics of Opthub.
“Andrew, through his own due diligence, chose the coding company in Vancouver,” Bryan Timlin said. “They are our partners, they do all our coding.”
Everything else, however, comes from the Timlins.
Together Andrew and Bryan spent over a year designing the website.
“The rest of the coding took about 9 months,” Bryan Timlin said. “But everything else was us.”
Pizza Franchise Papa Romano’s is one of the many establishments that has benefited off of the advertising Opthub provides.
“It’s hard to market and advertise to high schoolers,” said local Papa Romanos Manager Moe Serour. “And it is actually working out as a pretty good tool to get [students to come.]”
Junior Mikaela Strech is an avid user of the sight, taking part in some of the first deals, including the free slice of pizza from Brooklyn Pizza and the one-dollar Subway sub.
“It’s really easy,” Strech said. “It’s really great to get these discounts. I don’t see why anyone wouldn’t want to use it.”
One of the biggest steps for the site was the attention the Opthub Facebook page recently earned from major Mexican restaurant chain, Qdoba.
On the corporate operated Qdoba Facebook account, the page likes only their own locations, along with a few other major corporations and one other page: Opthub.
But beyond attention from corporations, popularity among users, or meeting the goals set by inspirational figures, the real motives of the company are made clear from the founders.
“Someone said to us one time that with Google it is a search engine,” Bryan Timlin said. “But with Opthub, it’s a connection engine. We actually connect them.”
